Coordinating donations for womens refuges in South Auckland

How you can help us help the women at the refuge in June.

Happy Queens Birthday weekend, everyone. What a busy and productive month May was. We raised enough money to buy one of the refuge staff members a car! (Roll on Women On Wheels, so that bit is taken care of).

If you want to help us help the women at the refuge this month, you can do that in this one very important way. I need your money. I always need your money but this month, we have to make what’s in the bank account last until July. Because we got our May payout early – so that R could buy her car – it means that we won’t get a pay out this month. All money raised through givealittle each month is paid out the following month. So our next lot doesn’t come, now, until July. A bit of a long wait when you have ongoing supermarket cards to buy, and car repairs to pay for, and all the other random expenses that pop their heads up in this completely unpredictable business we call Auntying. We operate on a very limited amount of money, all provided by YOU and you know what? That’s okay! But it’s a big ask for everyone, me included. We do it, though, don’t we?

So this month, what do we have to pay for?

Car repairs. The same woman whose car windows we paid to fix needs her lamp on her jeep fixed too. I wasn’t aware that her ex had damaged that as well when she left. The quote for that is $586. Another woman has let me know that her car needs a bit of panel beating – thanks to her ex. We don’t have a quote for that but she’ll let me know.

Supermarket gift cards and KMart gift cards. When the women arrive at the refuge, along with everything else they’re given, they get $100 supermarket gift cards to tide them over. And when they leave they get $150 KMart gift cards so that they can bits and pieces for their new homes.

Mileage. A couple of months ago, the Board decided that the thing to do would be to pay me mileage. I don’t currently get paid for full time Auntying, and it is a fulltime job, and so this is the one way I get recompensed. I drive around 800-900 kilometres a month, which works out at about $500-$600 a month. When there’s only ever around $2000 in the bank account at the beginning of each month – sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less – some months I just have to wait to get it paid. The women come first. Always. This is an ongoing expense.

Ongoing refuge expenses. Every month, there’s stuff the refuge pays for – ID cards, licences etc. Instead of using their MSD funding on these, Kris asks for the amount needed and I just put it in the refuge account. This amounts to about $600 a month.

So those are the things your money is needed for this month. You can put that on the givealittle but I would prefer you use the bank account.

MRS V L EDWARDS AND MRS J GOODISON AND OTHERS

12-3077-0008717-00

Thank you all so much. You keep this ship afloat in more ways than one.